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Philadelphia, October 1, 2026 – The Jewish Publication Society is proud to announce the publication of Life Against Death – a two-volume collection of essays by Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg.
In this 2-volume collection, Greenberg curates, introduces, and reflects on the most important essays written over the course of his lifetime on the United States and Israel, from 1965 to 2025. These influential works recognized as classic in his oeuvre identify turning points in Jewish life, along with policies key to successful Jewish living in the modern world.
Greenberg begins by reflecting on the universal struggle of life against death in the world. Judaism and the Jewish people are meant to serve as an avant- garde in repairing the world by overcoming the enemies of life, including oppression and war.
In Part 1 of the first volume, titled “America,” Greenberg champions an enrichment of Jewish life and an embrace of pluralism as necessary responses to Jews’ acceptance in open society and endangerment from totalitarianism. In Part 2, “Israel,” he offers vision and guidance on the religious significance of the State of Israel, on interactions of Israel and American Jewry, and on a new ethic of power that relinquishes purity for the opportunity to create real life in the real world.
Volume 2 opens with “The Holocaust,” in which Greenberg traces the development of his pioneering theological responses meant to incorporate this catastrophe into Jewish life while repairing the credibility and real life effectiveness of Jewish religion: the mandate to recreate life on the greatest possible scale; the discovery that God had relinquished control in history so that humans could take greater responsibility in shaping historical outcomes; and the flourishing of pluralism as an antidote to the flawed nature of even the noblest of singular paths. In Part 2, “Jewish- Christian Relations,” he offers the most positive Jewish theology of Christianity ever produced by a traditional Jewish thinker: a trailblazing vision that God meant Judaism and Christianity to be covenantal partners and parallel channels to bring tikkun olam to humanity.
New introductions to each essay narrate behind-the-scenes stories and breakthroughs formative to its contents, as well as Greenberg’s hindsight: evolving thoughts, recognitions of past errors, comparisons of his predictions versus realities, and insights on relevance of the core principles in our changed times.
Two essays have never been published before: “The Religious Significance of the State of Israel,” given as a conference paper in 1970, and “Israel and World Jewry After October 7,” written in 2025 as a needed response to the fundamental transformation of Israel’s image and world status.
Readers will get to know Greenberg as a thought leader, an activist, a man, and a Jew.
The books are available at jps.org/books/life-against-death/.
“A monumental work, and a must read! Yitz Greenberg’s two-volume set of essays chronicling fifty years of the Jewish condition and the human condition is a veritable Maimonidean Guide for the Perplexed for our troubled times. And more: it is a call to choose life, and thereby repair the Jewish condition and the human condition one good deed at a time.”—Irwin Cotler, founder and international chair, Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights
“Life Against Death encapsulates Rabbi Yitz Greenberg’s moral clarity, theological daring, and relentless commitment to life even in the shadow of profound rupture. His voice is wise, demanding, and ever hopeful, and his humanity is felt deeply on every page.”—Rabbi Sharon Brous, senior and founding rabbi of IKAR “When one of the most searching moral voices in modern Jewish thought reflects on the essays that have shaped generations of Jewish thinking through the lens of his lifetime, what emerges is a deeply humane theology—one forged in catastrophe, tested by power, and animated by responsibility and hope. At a moment when the Jewish future feels uncertain, Irving Greenberg offers not reassurance but courage: a clear-eyed insistence that renewal remains possible, and that choosing life is still our task.”—Abigail Pogrebin, author of My Jewish Year
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Rabbi Irving Greenberg is a preeminent Jewish thinker, theologian, activist, president of the J.J. Greenberg Institute for the Advancement of Jewish Life, and senior scholar-in-residence at Hadar. He served as a founding president of CLAL: The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, founding president of the Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation, activist/founder of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, chair of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and rabbi of the Riverdale Jewish Center. He is the author of multiple volumes, including The Triumph of Life: A Narrative Theology of Judaism (JPS, 2024) and For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter between Judaism and Christianity (JPS, 2004), and he won the Jewish Book Council’s 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award. Rabbi Greenberg is available for media interviews.
About JPS:
The Jewish Publication Society (JPS) is a leading nonprofit publisher of works on Jewish thought. Since 1888, our mission has been to produce rigorous, inspiring Jewish books from scholars and writers across denominations, and to make that scholarship accessible to readers around the world.
Contact:
Deena Schoenfeld, Director of Marketing and Communications
The Jewish Publication Society
dschoenfeld@jps.org
jps.org
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